Netanyahu attacks: ‘Mandelblit government coup plot has been fully revealed’

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s associates are embarking on a fierce attack on Attorney General Dr. Avichai Mandelblit, accusing him of fomenting a “government coup” plot.

The charges come after a quote by officials in the Justice Department released earlier this evening on Channel 13 News, stating that “If Netanyahu wants a gift of NIS 10 million from a friend then please, be our guest; resign and then he can also have NIS 20 million.”

“The Mandelblit government coup plot has been exposed to its full extent,” the sources say.

According to them, “Mandelblit is trying to undo the democratic decision of millions of citizens who elected Binyamin Netanyahu as prime minister, as well as the decision of eleven Supreme Court justices who determined that Prime Minister Netanyahu can serve.”

“And this is what Justice Department officials dare to call ‘democracy’ and ‘rule of law’,” the associates added.

Opposition Chairman MK Yair Lapid attacked the Prime Minister Netanyahu following his announcement, calling the message “severe incitement”.

“The only coup attempt that’s taking place here is Netanyahu’s attempt to turn Israel from a democracy into a dictatorship, and his criminal attempt to make Mandelblit a target for threats and incitement,” Lapid said.

Lapid took a veiled snipe at his former Blue and White associates: “Anyone who continues to sit in his government after the last statement cannot later claim ‘I didn’t know’.”

Original: Arutz Sheva

Turkey cannot re-export Russian S-400 systems without Russia’s consent, official says

Turkey cannot transfer or re-export Russian S-400 missile defense systems to third countries without Russia’s consent, the press service of Russia’s Federal Service for Military Technical Cooperation told TASS on Tuesday.

“To export military products, a buyer of our weapons must present an end-user declaration to the Russian side. That is why transfer or re-export of such products to third countries is impossible without an official permit from the Russian side,” it stressed.

The US Defense News newspaper said on Monday Senate Majority Whip John Thune had proposed an amendment to the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would allow to buy Russian-made S-400 air defense systems from Turkey using the US Army’s missile procurement account. According to the newspaper this move will make it possible to overcome the impasse between Washington and Ankara over Turkey’s participation in a program to produce F-35 Lightning II fifth-generation fighter jets.

Russia said in September 2017 that it had signed a $2.5 bln contract for supplies of its S-400 missile systems with Turkey. The first batch under the contract was delivered to Ankara by air transport in July 2019.

The United States and NATO have been seeking to break down the deal. The White House said in mid-July that “Turkey’s decision to purchase Russian S-400 air defense systems renders its continued involvement with the F-35 impossible.”

Russia’s S-400 ‘Triumf’ (NATO reporting name: SA-21 Growler) is the latest long-and medium-range surface-to-air missile system that went into service in 2007. It is designed to destroy aircraft, cruise and ballistic missiles, and can also be used against ground installations. The S-400 can engage targets at a distance of up to 400 km and at an altitude of up to 30 km under intensive enemy fire and jamming.

Original: TASS

Israel to soon get its first female F-35 pilot

Twenty years after the first woman took to the skies as Israel’s first combat pilot, the Israel Air Force will soon have its first female F-35 pilot, sources have told The Jerusalem Post.

She will reportedly fly in the 116th squadron, nicknamed “Lions of the South,” based out of Nevatim in southern Israel.

Israel was the first to use the F-35 in in a combat arena in 2018, just months after it declared operational capability. And according to foreign reports, Israel continues to use the jet for a range of missions.

By November, the IAF will have 27 F-35i Adir aircraft out of a total of 50 planes set to land in the coming years to make two full squadrons by 2024.

Once she gets her wings, she is expected to fly combat missions along with her fellow IAF pilots.

While there are several female F-35 pilots in the US Air Force, it is believed that she will be only the second woman to fly the advanced 5th-generation stealth fighter jet in combat.

In early June, US Air Force Capt. Emily “Banzai” Thompson made history by becoming the first woman to ever fly the F-35A Lightning II in combat out of Al Dhafra Air Base in the United Arab Emirates.

“There’s a lot of females who have come before me, and there’s a lot of females already flying combat sorties in other platforms,” Thompson was quoted by a US Air Force news release as saying. “So just to be the person who gets that honor, that first, it just meant a lot.”

Last week, three women received their wings from IAF Commander Maj.-Gen. Amikam Norkin, joining a growing list of women who have taken to the skies in Israel’s air force.

In 1949, Israel’s army became the first in the world to introduce mandatory military service for both men and women, and in 1951, Yael Rom became the first graduate of the prestigious pilots course. Shortly afterward, however, women were once again barred from combat positions, including from becoming pilots.

In 1993, South African immigrant Alice Miller successfully sued the military for her right to enlist into the air force. While she was declared medically unfit for the role of a pilot, her actions shattered the glass ceiling in the IAF and opened up the pilots course to women.

In 2000, Lt. Roni Zuckerman, the granddaughter of two leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, became the first woman to graduate as a combat fighter pilot.

In 2018, Norkin appointed two women to senior positions: the first to command an aviation squadron of “Nachshon” (Gulfstream V) aircraft from Nevatim Air Force Base, participating in intelligence and aerial reconnaissance missions, and the other to command the IAF’s operational command and control unit.

“I believe that it is our duty in the IDF to fulfill the inherent potential in women,” Norkin said at the time. “We are still far from this goal, but I am sure that this process will continue – and that we will appoint female commanders and soldiers in a wide variety of positions in the air force and in the IDF in general.”

Earlier that year, another woman was appointed deputy commander of a combat squadron that flies F-15 fighter jets out of Tel Nof airbase in central Israel. In addition, two other female officers were appointed to serve as deputy commanders of a squadron of UAVs out of Palmahim airbase.

Original: Anna Aronheim – JPost

US Federal Communications Agency designates Huawei, ZTE as national security threats

The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has designated Chinese tech firms Huawei and ZTE as national security threats to the United States, commission chairman Ajit Pai announced Tuesday.

“The FCC has designated Huawei and ZTE as companies posing a national security threat to the United States,” Pai stated in a tweet. “As a result, telecom companies cannot use money from our $8.3 billion Universal Service Fund on equipment or services produced or provided by these suppliers,” he added.

Pai followed up the tweet with a Chinese-language version to make sure Beijing got the message.

He added that the decision was made accounting for “input from Congress, the Executive Branch, the intelligence community, allies, and communications service providers,” and that that the designation was supported on the basis of the “overwhelming weight of evidence.” He did not go into detail regarding what this evidence was.

“Both Huawei and ZTE have close ties to the Chinese Communist Party and China’s military apparatus. And both companies are broadly subject to Chinese law, which obligates them to cooperate with the country’s intelligence services. With this decision, we are sending a clear message: the US Government, and this FCC in particular, cannot and will not allow the Chinese Communist Party to exploit vulnerabilities in US communications networks and compromise our critical communications infrastructure,” Pai said.

​The United States has previously accused Huawei, ZTE, and their subsidiaries and affiliates of collaborating with Chinese intelligence services and of using equipment for illegal surveillance purposes. Separately, US officials have claimed that the Chinese high tech companies have engaged in illegal business practices including technology theft. The tech firms have refuted these claims as unjustified, evidence-free and politically motivated, and accused Washington of seeking to limit free market competition.

The tech dispute is part of a broader conflict between the economic superpowers, which includes a trade war where hundreds of billions of dollars are at stake, as well as geopolitical tensions over the South China Sea, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, and back-and-forth claims by both sides regarding the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.

In addition to the restrictions in the US itself, Washington has sought to pressure its European allies to reject Chinese high-tech products, including Huawei’s bid to become a major global supplier of next-gen 5G internet infrastructure.

Source: SPUTNIK

Fauci warns US could see 100,000 coronavirus cases a day if surge continues

National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci on Tuesday warned that the U.S could see as many as 100,000 coronavirus cases a day if a current spike in cases does not subside.

“We are now having 40-plus-thousand new cases a day, I wouldn’t be surprised if we go up to 100,000 [cases] a day if this does not turn around,” he said at a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing. “I am very concerned.”

There has been an increase in cases, particularly in the South and the West. It comes after a month that has seen states reopening their economies, including bars and restaurants, and has seen mass protests and riots in the wake of the death of George Floyd.

States, including Arizona, California, Florida and Texas, have paused or backtracked their reopening plans as the number of confirmed coronavirus cases has soared. In Arizona, health officials reported 3,858 more confirmed coronavirus cases Sunday, the most reported in a single day in the state so far and the seventh time in the past 10 days that daily cases surpassed the 3,000 mark.

Earlier, Fauci told the “Fox News Rundown” that it was “too early to say” what has caused the spike.

“A lot of people came out [on] Memorial Day, which is about four weeks ago, three-and-a-half to four weeks ago, and were out on the beaches and in the bars,” Fauci told host Jessica Rosenthal.

“Right now, we’re seeing the result of that in Florida and in Texas and in certain other locations.”

A large share of the cases are among young people who are going out again to bars and restaurants, who are less likely to suffer serious symptoms from the virus. But it has raised fears that young people could go on to infect the elderly or vulnerable.

Meanwhile, Cleveland’s public health director revealed Monday that the current spike in coronavirus cases there is rooted in the days following a May 30 Black Lives Matter protest, when the city lifted daytime travel restrictions.

Health experts have long warned about the possibility of a second wave of the virus as the country re-opens from the harsh lockdowns that were put into place in March in response to the virus.

But efforts to re-impose lockdown restrictions would likely face significant opposition from those who question the efficacy of such a strategy, and who also highlight the economic and social damage that lockdowns have caused.

Original: Fox News – Samuel Chamberlain and The Associated Press contributed to this report

Massive protests? Crowded chain stores? No, it’s SMALL BUSINESSES to blame for post-lockdown Covid-19 spike, says MSM

Many states have reported unsettling rises in Covid-19 cases in recent weeks, so much so that states like Texas and Florida have put the brakes on allowing bars, restaurants, and other places people gather to resume operations in the last week, insisting it’s too dangerous to continue.

Local and national media have been quick to point the finger at those small businesses that gave lockdown-crazed Americans a tiny taste of their pre-pandemic lives, insisting it was these nods to the “old normal” – getting a drink with friends at the bar, or grabbing lunch with a relative at the corner restaurant – that are to blame for the recent case spikes.

But this rush to pin the case increases on small businesses reopening ignores several other potential causes of the uptick – the most obvious being the massive protests against police brutality that have thronged the streets of American cities large and small for the past month, rarely taking note of anything like social distancing and sometimes degenerating into rioting and violence. The focus on small businesses also ignores the continued role of big-box stores and chain restaurants – which have also seen heavy traffic as restrictions are lifted, yet somehow seem immune (no pun intended) to the media scoldfest.

A “healthcare worker” in Jacksonville, Florida claimed in a Facebook post earlier this month that she and 15 friends took advantage of the state allowing bars to reopen earlier this month, gathering for a drink at their local watering hole, only to all be laid low by the coronavirus. The moral of the story, as she made clear, was that the friends were wrong to attempt to find joy in their post-lockdown lives, and (presumably) should have stuck to drinking at home and commiserating over Zoom. Dozens of outlets ran with the story, even though there would be no logical way to tell the friends all caught it from one night out at the bar. Just hearing about the outbreak triggered other bars in the city to re-close their doors in fear, and as of Monday Jacksonville has not only reversed its reopening but slapped a mask mandate on its residents.

The narrative – “even though you don’t have to anymore, it’s best to still stay home, because the virus is everywhere” – proved irresistible, and similar stories have been published everywhere from Texas to Michigan.

The Hill even published an op-ed by a “small business consultant” apparently looking to scare up some business by preemptively blaming the entire small business sector for the case spike. Meanwhile, big-box stores like Walmart and chain fast food restaurants were all but overlooked in the scramble to pin the “second wave” on the little guy – even though the heavily-trafficked superstores especially would seem to be natural viral incubators, especially given their tendency to attract deodorant-licking pranksters and other attention-seekers eager for their 15 minutes of social media infamy.

It’s entirely possible some of these people really did catch the virus from their one night out drinking with friends after three months of faithful lockdown. Yet even as media outlets appeared to delight in fingering beloved neighborhood bars or popular restaurants for supposedly reigniting the flames of the pandemic, the George Floyd protests that convinced many to ditch their scrupulous adherence to social distancing and join the roiling mass of humanity in the streets demanding justice seem to have flown under their radar. While some tried to cite a factually-dubious scientific paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research, which struggled mightily to absolve the protests from any role in subsequent case spike, even the paper itself never claimed the protests didn’t transmit coronavirus – it merely made the (utterly unverifiable) claim that people in cities that held protests were choosing to stay home more because of the protests.

Not only does statistical analysis appear to show the start of the demonstrations coinciding with a reversal of fortunes for the US’ pandemic numbers, but states with higher post-lockdown numbers weren’t necessarily the ones throwing wide open the doors to their bars and restaurants, either.

There’s no definitive way to trace transmission of the virus to the protests, of course – certainly not when New York City’s contact tracers are forbidden from even asking the people they call if they’ve attended one. And given the unalloyed enthusiasm most mainstream news organizations displayed for the protests, it would be downright embarrassing for them to admit that it’s possible to catch a virus while demonstrating for racial justice. But before Americans scrap their brief post-lockdown experiments with freedom and run back into the claustrophobic confines of their stay-at-home orders, never to gather with friends in public again, they might take note of these outlets’ conflicts of interest. After all, what guarantees ratings better than a homebound captive audience?

Original: Helen Buyniski – RT

Israeli efforts to invent a coronavirus vaccine, explained

An Israeli team has made the World Health Organization’s periodic report on international vaccine efforts.

In what is believed to be the first appearance for Israeli scientists on the “landscape of COVID-19 candidate vaccines,” the Israel Institute for Biological Research and the Weizmann Institute of Science got a listing for their joint work on a vaccine design.

This comes on the heels of a breakthrough in their attempt to produce a vaccine against the novel coronavirus.

The Israeli team is one of 149 that appear in the document.

So what is the breakthrough that is garnering attention for the Israeli researchers, and what kind of vaccine are they planning? Why is a clandestine institute behind the research coming out of the shadows? Finally, what other vaccines are in the Israeli pipeline?

What was the recent breakthrough?

A week and a half ago, scientists in Ness Ziona, near Tel Aviv, revealed that they had designed a vaccine and tested it on hamsters. They wrote that a single dose “was able to protect hamsters against SARS-CoV-2.”

They are confident because, among other factors, vaccinated hamsters lost less body weight after infection than unvaccinated hamsters, and also had healthier-looking lungs.

They didn’t publish the research in a peer-reviewed journal, which is seen as the gold standard of scientific research, but did present both their data and their analysis on an online repository for papers.

Who is behind the vaccine?

There are several vaccine teams in Israel, but none is receiving as much attention from politicians as this one, since it comes from a vaunted Defense Ministry-run institute.

The Israel Institute for Biological Research is a shadowy establishment that normally reveals hardly anything about its work.

Political analysts have been staggered by the extent to which it has suddenly, during the pandemic, been propelled in to the public eye, with leaders constantly talking about its work, and even making visits there.

“It’s like if we suddenly started getting updates on what the nuclear reactor in Dimona is doing,” Yonatan Freeman, international relations and national security expert at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, told The Times of Israel recently.

What kind of vaccine is it?

The vaccine is based on the vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV), an animal virus that has already been used in a recently released Ebola vaccine. It involves altering the protein composition of the VSV: replacing the glycoprotein of VSV with the spike protein of the SARS-CoV-2.

By doing this, the research team said, it came up with a formula that makes hamsters — and, it hopes, humans — induce production of neutralizing antibodies that can protect from SARS-CoV-2.

Politicians are excited, but are scientists?

Yes. Some of Israel’s top experts in vaccines and viruses have been impressed by the Biological Institute’s published results.

“I read it carefully, and what they produced was very good,” microbiologist Herve Bercovier told The Times of Israel.

Bercovier, former vice president for research and development at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, was wowed that the vaccine design uses a shortcut of sorts, namely the VSV model.

He thinks it was smart to use this model, with its good track record for Ebola, and says this will inspire the confidence of doctors and regulators. “You have a platform that is already approved,” he noted.

Are there any critics?

Prof. Jonathan Gershoni of Tel Aviv University, who is trying to develop his own vaccine based on a recently patented model, told The Times of Israel that he has some criticisms of the Biological Institute’s design.

He said that the vaccinated hamsters in the the institute’s research didn’t retain body weight as well as he would have hoped, as their mass was lower than that of uninfected hamsters. He also said that one of the vaccinated hamsters in the study had signs of infection in the lung.

That being the case, he thinks that the data in the research paper doesn’t support its claims, and he believes that the vaccine in development has benefits, but that they are “not dramatic.”

What happens next?

The institute is a long way off from producing a tested and approved human vaccine. Several stages of testing are needed first.

That’s why Israel’s leaders are hedging their bets — continuing to support this and other homegrown vaccine efforts, while signing a deal to buy a vaccine which is being developed by the American biotech company Moderna.

The famously long approval process may be expedited for the Biological Institute by virtue of the Ebola precedent for the vaccine platform, some experts say.

Cyrille Cohen, head of the immunotherapy laboratory at Bar-Ilan University, told The Times of Israel: “If a platform is well-known it’s possible to use the toxicology — data needed to check for possible harmful effects — from other vaccines based on the same technology, in order to hasten the first part of the approval process.”

What other vaccine projects are in progress?

An oral vaccine being developed in the Galilee was one of the first to report progress, back in March. The state-funded Migal Galilee Research Institute got a head-start because it has been working for four years toward a vaccine that could be customized for various viruses. This research has given rise to a new startup, MigVax, which is working on the MigVax-101 COVID-19 oral vaccine for humans based on a platform that was shown to be an effective oral vaccine against infectious bronchitis virus in poultry.

Gershoni’s vaccine model has also attracted investment. Last month, Neovii, a Swiss-based biopharmaceutical company, signed a research and license agreement to develop Gershoni’s research into a “novel and potentially life-saving COVID-19 vaccine.” His approach is to target the receptor-binding motif (RBM), a critical structure that enables the virus to bind to and infect a target cell.

Meanwhile, at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Avi Schroeder is developing a vaccine for coronavirus based on an additive he developed, which is added to water to keep shrimps healthy. It is being commercialized by his Technion startup ViAqua Therapeutics.

Header: A medical team at the coronavirus unit, in the Ichilov hospital, Tel Aviv, Israel, May 4, 2020. (Yossi Aloni/Flash90)

Source: Natham Jeffay – TOI

The War on Cash – COVID Edition Part I

The corona crisis has already taken a very high toll and caused deep damage in our societies and our economies, the extent of which is yet to become apparent. We have seen its impact on productivity, on unemployment, on social cohesion and on political division. However, there is another very worrying trend that has been accelerated under the veil of fear and confusion that the pandemic has spread. The war on cash, already underway for almost a decade, has been drastically intensified over the last few months.

The “Problem”

Over the last years, and as the war on cash has escalated, we’ve gotten used to hearing certain arguments or “reasons” why we should all abandon paper money and move en masse to an exclusively digital economy.

These talking points have been repeated over and over, in most Western economies and by countless institutional figures. “Cash is used by terrorists, money launderers, and criminals” is arguably the most oft repeated one, as it’s been widely employed in most debates about the digital transition. Just a couple of years ago it was also used by Mario Draghi to support the decision to scrap the 500-euro note.

We didn’t get any specific information or data about how many terrorists were actually using this high-denomination note, but we do know that a lot of law-abiding citizens were using it to save, as were small business owners for their operational liquidity needs.

Now, however, the corona crisis has introduced a whole new direction for anti-cash rhetoric and fresh arguments in favor of a digital economy. Even in the early stages of the pandemic, when essentially nothing was concretely known about the virus or its transmission, the seeds of new fears were already being planted by sensational media reports and fear-mongering political and institutional figures.

The insidious idea that “you can catch COVID through cash” may have been prematurely spread, but it did stick in most people’s minds. This is, of course, understandable given the extremely high levels of uncertainty and anxiety in the general public.

Wanting to eliminate potential threats was a natural instinct and so was the urge to take back at least some control over our lives after they’d been thrown into utter chaos by the global economic freeze.

Another factor that concretely helped the shift away from physical cash was an entirely practical one. Given the lockdown measures and the new “social distancing” directives that were enforced all over the world, it became difficult to use cash even if you really wanted to, or if you had no other means of transaction, as is the case for billions of people. With physical stores being forced to shut down and with more and more online shops offering contactless delivery (either as a choice or as a service requirement), the need for cash very quickly gave way to digital payments.

For most of us who have access to online banking, cards, or other digital payment services, this introduced no real inconvenience, and we probably didn’t even give it a second thought. However, for many of our fellow citizens it was a serious impediment that in some cases blocked their access to basic goods and essential supplies. Contrary to the glowing promises of the digital economy, of financial inclusion and convenience, the fact remains that there are still millions of people who simply do not have access to this brave new world. According to figures by the World Bank, globally there are 2.5 billion people with no bank account, with a high concentration in the developing world. In the West too, however, there is a very large part of the population that is unbanked and/or has no access to digital solutions, while the elderly are also to a very large extent “locked out” of the digital economy. For all these billions of people, cash is the only way to save, to transact, and to cover basic needs.

The “Solution”

With cash being presented not just as a danger to society and to national security, but also as a direct health hazard due to the coronavirus, the push toward digital alternatives has been massively reinforced over the last few months. Both international organizations and individual governments have actively participated in and encouraged this push, some through public guidance statements and others through the blunt enforcement of direct rules and measures that leave no real room for citizens to make their own choices.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in its official guidance to retail workers recommended that they “encourage customers to use touchless payment options,” while a report by the World Bank highlighted the need to adopt cashless payments for the sake of “social protection.” The UAE Central Bank encouraged the use of online banking and digital payments “as a measure to protect the health and safety of UAE residents,” and the Bank of England has acknowledged that banknotes can hold “bacteria and viruses” and recommended that people wash their hands after handling money.

In March, a report from Reuters revealed that the US Federal Reserve was quarantining dollars that it repatriated from Asia and so was South Korea’s central bank, while the government forced banks in China to disinfect bills and keep them in a safe for up to fourteen days before putting them in circulation.

A highlight, however, came in May when the World Economic Forum published an article in its Global Agenda strongly supporting the mass adoption of digital payments for the sake of public health.

In it the authors argue that “contactless digital payments at the point of sale, such as facial recognition, Quick Response (QR) codes or near-field communications (NFC), can make it less likely for the virus to spread to others through cash exchanges.”

They also applauded the efforts of China in digitalizing payments and appeared to hold the country and its measures as a model to be emulated: “China’s path to enabling digital payments should provide some lessons to other countries eager to follow suit.” Since a number of Western governments may indeed be “eager to follow suit,” let us take a closer look at this bright example and examine what it really entails.

Fiat Money 2.0

The digitalization drive in all aspects of the Chinese state, society, and economy is nothing new and it certainly predated the emergence of COVID-19. The country’s infamous “social rating system” made headlines years ago, and the government’s eagerness to use technology, the internet, and all sorts of digital systems to track its citizens’ behavior and affiliations has long attracted international criticism and widespread condemnation by human rights organizations, privacy advocates, and free speech supporters. Now, however, the state has been given a reason to accelerate its efforts in the mass adoption of digital payments and the abandonment of cash.

To a large extent, this digitalization of payments task was much easier in China, as digital payments there were already very widespread. More than 80 percent of consumers already used mobile payments in 2019 according to management consultancy Bain, a sharp contrast with the US, which had adoption rates of less than 10 percent.

So, as the population had already accepted a new form of payment, the new initiative sought to dominate the means of payment too. Thus, a new “digital yuan” was introduced. This new fiat currency, which has been in development for over five years, was rolled out in April in four Chinese cities, with a plan for national adoption soon so that it eventually replaces the physical legal tender.

This so-called Digital Currency Electronic Payment (DCEP) will be put into circulation through China’s big four state banks, and citizens will be able to receive and use it by downloading an electronic wallet application authorized by the People’s Bank of China (PBOC), which will be linked to their bank account. On the surface, it appears to work just like the old currency. It is issued and backed by the PBOC; it’s valued the same as the physical banknotes; and, thanks to partnerships with Alipay and WeChat Pay, which control 80 percent of the country’s payment market, it will be used to pay for anything and be paid by anyone. In fact, some public servant salaries and state subsidies are already being paid out in this new digital yuan, arriving in their intended recipients’ digital wallets.

According to China’s state media, People’s Daily, the new currency is meant to simplify domestic transactions and trade, but it will also facilitate and ease cross-border transactions.

The implication there is clear: it is yet another attempt to challenge the global dominance of the US dollar after the Belt and Road Initiative failed to really move the needle as the Chinese state had hoped.

The strategy of spending huge amounts of Chinese money abroad did provide some leverage over developing countries, but it didn’t come anywhere near “dethroning” the dollar and internationalizing the renminbi. Perhaps this initiative will fare better, especially as China now has the “first-mover” advantage.

Entering this “digital fiat” arena first is hugely important, and the timing of the digital currency’s launch was no coincidence.

The development and the rollout plan were significantly accelerated following Facebook’s announcement of the libra, as the Chinese state wouldn’t have the private tech giant beat them to the punch. In fact, the digital yuan resembles the libra in many ways.

Most importantly, neither of them is a cryptocurrency, which is decentralized by design and allows for peer-to-peer transactions without need of an intermediary or third party. In this case the issuer is the third party, and all transactions go through a very centralized system that controls and has access to all the data. In another non-coincidence, just a few years back, China’s government banned initial coin offerings (ICOs) and placed great burdens on cryptocurrencies and crypto investors, making it very hard to operate in the country, thereby dismantling the threat of potential competition from the private sector and clearing the way for its own digital coin.

Originally published at ClaudioGrass.ch

‘Delusional’ Trump bullied Merkel and May; pandered to Putin, Erdogan — report

US President Donald Trump has been woefully and consistently unprepared, outplayed and offensive in hundreds of his phone calls with various world leaders, leading multiple senior officials in that administration to conclude that he is “delusional” and poses “a danger to the national security of the United States,” CNN reported Tuesday.

Among other reported gaffes, Trump regularly abused German Chancellor Angela Merkel and former UK prime minister Theresa May in “near-sadistic” fashion — calling Merkel “stupid” and May “weak” — while being “taken advantage of” by Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The report cited an unspecified number of White House and US intelligence sources “intimately familiar with the contents of the conversations.”

The sources said Trump didn’t become more competent in those calls over time and that he “continued to believe that he could either charm, jawbone or bully almost any foreign leader into capitulating to his will, and often pursued goals more attuned to his own agenda than what many of his senior advisers considered the national interest,” according to the report.

CNN said that among the administration officials who felt that way about Trump were national security advisers H.R. McMaster and John Bolton, defense secretary James Mattis, secretary of state Rex Tillerson, and White House chief of staff John Kelly, as well as intelligence officials.

One source was quoted as saying that “if members of Congress heard from witnesses to the actual conversations or read the texts and contemporaneous notes, even many senior Republican members would no longer be able to retain confidence in the President.”

White House deputy press secretary Sarah Matthews commented on the report, saying: “President Trump is a world class negotiator who has consistently furthered America’s interests on the world stage. From negotiating the phase one China deal and the USMCA to NATO allies contributing more and defeating ISIS, President Trump has shown his ability to advance America’s strategic interests.”

The report said Trump regularly had tirades against many heads of state, including Merkel, May, French President Emmanuel Macron, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison.

The most vicious attacks were directed against the two female leaders, the sources said.

“Some of the things he said to Angela Merkel are just unbelievable: He called her ‘stupid,’ and accused her of being in the pocket of the Russians,” one source was quoted as saying, with others confirming. “He’s toughest [in the phone calls] with those he looks at as weaklings and weakest with the ones he ought to be tough with.”

A German official was quoted as saying Trump’s calls with Merkel were so unusual that Berlin had taken special measures to ensure their contents weren’t published, including shrinking the number of officials monitoring those calls.

“It’s just a small circle of people who are involved and the reason, the main reason, is that they are indeed problematic,” the source said.

Trump’s calls with May “were described as ‘humiliating and bullying,’ with Trump attacking her as ‘a fool’ and spineless in her approach to Brexit, NATO and immigration matters,” the report said.

While Merkel was unruffled by Trump’s behavior and received it “like water off a duck’s back,” as one source put it, May became “flustered and nervous” in the phone calls and was intimidated by the US president.

However, in conversations with Putin and Erdogan, the report said Trump was “almost never prepared substantively” and was left “susceptible to being taken advantage of in various ways.”

The calls with Putin often sounded like “two guys in a steam bath,” according to one source.

Another source, a high-ranking administration official, was quoted as saying Putin “just outplays” Trump, likening the Russian leader to a chess grandmaster and Trump to an amateur checkers player.

Trump talked mostly about himself in many of the calls, particularly with Putin, the report said, “frequently in over-the-top, self-aggrandizing terms.”

In many of the calls with Putin, “Trump left top national security aides and his chiefs of staff flabbergasted, less because of specific concessions he made than because of his manner — inordinately solicitous of Putin’s admiration and seemingly seeking his approval — while usually ignoring substantive policy expertise and important matters on the standing bilateral agenda, including human rights,” according to the report.

“He’s given Russia a lifeline — because there is no doubt that they’re a declining power … He’s playing with something he doesn’t understand and he’s giving them power that they would use [aggressively],” one source was quoted as saying, giving as an example the decision to withdraw US troops from Syria.

Erdogan had by far the most calls with Trump, the report said, sometimes phoning twice a week. It said the Turkish leader easily bypassed normal protocols and reached Trump directly, even while the president was out playing golf.

“Erdogan became so adept at knowing when to reach the President directly that some White House aides became convinced that Turkey’s security services in Washington were using Trump’s schedule and whereabouts to provide Erdogan with information about when the President would be available for a call,” the report said.

Trump was said to have proven himself utterly uninformed about the Syrian civil war and the Middle East in general. “Erdogan took him to the cleaners,” one source said.

In general, his calls almost always revolved around Trump himself rather than the United States, the report said, adding that he would take delight in trashing his predecessors, Barack Obama and George W. Bush, often saying “they didn’t know BS.”

As one US official quoted put it: “Everything was always personalized, with everybody doing terrible things to rip us off — which meant ripping ‘me’ — Trump — off. He couldn’t — or wouldn’t — see or focus on the larger picture.”

Header: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, right, US President Donald Trump, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, background, pose during a photo for NATO leaders in Hertfordshire, England, on December 4, 2019. (Peter Nicholls, Pool Photo via AP)

Source: TOI Staff

Israel: ‘They handcuffed Yedidya and treated him like a killer’

Kedushat Tzion Association Chairman and father of 14-year-old Yedidya who was arrested in Jerusalem’s Old City last weekend, Rabbi Yehuda Epstein, responds on Arutz Sheva to the police brutality that was unleashed against his son who was held a full night without food and water without his parents’ knowledge.

“I’m pretty shocked by the fact that a country that calls itself a democracy behaves like this to a 14-year-old,” he said in a conversation with Arutz Sheva.

“A little boy – to turn him into an enemy of the police force; it’s completely insane,” he added. “To treat him the way totalitarian states treat opponents of the regime, to handle him as if he were some killer, is something that simply cannot be.”

He said, “And it is clear that there is a trend here to break our spirit, of the Kedushat Tzion Association, of all the Jews who take the walk around the Temple Mount, by those who wish to abandon the area to the Arab rioters, and when these rioters throw rocks, we don’t run away, but continue with greater determination, and when we need to, we can fight back, which is exactly what the police don’t want.”

He dismissed the claim that police notified him of his son’s arrest. “That night the police said nothing to me,” he said. “Apparently they called and one of the children at home answered and told them that Father went to bed so they left it at that and as far as they were concerned they’d discharged their duty. It was only in the morning when I got up that I saw that the child wasn’t there. I was shocked.”

Attorney Itamar Ben Gvir representing minor Yedidia Epstein filed a lawsuit against the police for the harm done to him.

Arutz Sheva revealed that on Thursday, police arrested three Jewish boys on suspicion of disturbing order in the Muslim Quarter in Jerusalem after dozens of Arabs began to gather around them.

Testimony from one of the boys shows that the police used severe violence against Epstein and that he was deprived of basic rights such as providing food and water and giving notice of his arrest to his parents.

On Monday night, a video of the boy’s interrogation was also leaked by police and Ben Gvir addressed it. “We understand that the police are under pressure, but it’s a video that was edited by the police from the interrogation room in violation of the law, and questioning a minor against the youth law.

“No one can explain why the minor wasn’t imprisoned in a juvenile detention center, why he was forced to sleep on a bench, why he was cuffed – even if the police claim it was ‘only’ five hours “- is time for the Jerusalem Police to take responsibility for mistakes instead of using the best known defense which is an attack, certainly not against a minor,” Ben Gvir added.

Epstein, a 14-year-old minor, was arrested while walking with his friends around the gates of the Temple Mount as he does every Thursday. “We were in the Muslim Quarter about twenty guys,” he said. “About fifty Arabs arrived and started making trouble.”

“The Arabs came in numbers and started beating us,” he added. At that time, about five Border Police officers who were at the scene approached the boys and demanded they go away. “We told them, why are you kicking us out and not them? We didn’t agree to move and we laid on the ground, so they told us it was an illegal gathering. We got up and they asked us to start walking, we walked slowly and they started to push us. They pushed hard.”

He said, “Towards the Shechem Gate, there was trouble again. They started to kick us, they lifted me by my hands and legs. I told them that I live here and you can’t take me from where I live. I told them I wanted to go in, we were already at Shechem Gate and then they caught me, a Border Policemand and Border Policewoman, and took me.”

The two Border Police officers asked him to give them his personal phone. When he did not comply, they began pushing their hands into his pockets.

“The Border Policewoman put her hand in my pocket to take the phone, and I told her she was harassing me.

“I explained to them that I’m shomer negiah, and I suggested that I won’t resist but I’ll go with the Border Policeman at his own pace, with only him holding me. At one point, the Border Policeman started running with me and I fell. He dragged me,” he said.

The boy and the police officers who caught him arrived at the Jerusalem Border Police building.

“I came to Beit Eliyahu, where they made sure no one was filming and slammed the door shut. Another Border Policeman came and choked me, he grabbed me by the throat and a third Border Policeman threw his hand away from me. I told him I couldn’t breathe and then he pulled me. They kicked me, started beating me.”

Epstein further described the harsh violence directed against him. “He put me in the toilet, came in himself and locked the door. He put me against the wall and kicked me in the legs. I thought he was going to murder me, I’m not kidding,” he said. “He kept beating me and at one point he pulled me out and flung me on the chair.”

When Epstein asked for water, they replied that they had run out of water bottles. Around 22:00 he was transferred to the Jerusalem District headquarters building, the “Kishla” building.

Even there, 14-year-old Epstein testified, he received disgraceful treatment as he was forced to stay in the waiting room handcuffed all night, without food and water and without his parents being notified of his arrest. “A detention cell was occupied so they left me in the waiting room all night and didn’t let me talk to my parents,” he said. “They handcuffed me and my feet, until I arrived in court at 11:30 on Friday.”

He says “the other detainee who was with me asked to go to the bathroom and the Border Police came in with him and watched him urinate.”

“At night, they didn’t bring me any food, and in the morning I couldn’t eat what they brought me because I didn’t eat that kashrut. They told me it was kosher and I had to eat it,” Epstein said.

Epstein finally signed a release under restrictive conditions, distanced from the place for 60 days. He intends to appeal the restraining order and even to file a complaint with the Police Investigations Division against the police.

The Israel Police said: “The Israeli police strictly observe the rights and dignity of interrogees and detainees alongside the need to investigate the truth and to comply with the law, and was the case here.

“The suspect arrived in the Old City area with others who began to violate the order in the place, fighting with local residents and police officers and subsequently the suspect was arrested for questioning for disorderly conduct in a public place, interfering with a policeman, and behavior that could violate public peace, and in the morning he was brought to court and released on conditions,” police said.

It was also reported, “The Israeli police will act resolutely against anyone who interferes with police officers in their work and violates public order while harming others.”

Source: Arutz Sheva

Venezuelan president gives EU envoy 72 hours to leave country

The government of Venezuela gave the European Union’s envoy to Caracas 72 hours to leave the country after EU blacklisted 11 Venezuelan officials and lawmakers, President Nicolas Maduro announced.

“I decided to give the EU envoy to Caracas 72 hours to leave the country, and I demand that EU show respect. Enough of European colonialism and persecution with regard to Venezuela,” the president said in a speech, aired by Venezolana de Television.

“She has already been provided with an aircraft to fly away. Later we will start gradually solving issues with the European Union. If they don’t like us, if they don’t respect Venezuela, they are free to leave,” Maduro said.

Moreover, the Venezuelan president announced that Venezuelan authorities were considering the possibility of “taking diplomatic measures” against the ambassador of Spain.

He said the building of the country’s embassy housed talks about an invasion into the South American country.

“Venezuela reserves the right to take diplomatic measures against the ambassador of Spain for his role in the invasion,” Maduro said, adding that more news would follow in the coming hours.

On Monday, the European Union imposed sanctions on 11 Venezuelan officials and lawmakers for hindering the opposition led by Juan Guaido and “undermining democracy” in the country. The officials will be prohibited from entering the EU and their accounts in European banks will be frozen.

Source: TASS

Russia to build new Glonass station in Brazil by year-end — Roscosmos

A new ground station of Russia’s Glonass satellite navigation system is expected to begin its work in Brazil by the end of the year, a representative of Russia’s state space corporation Roscosmos in the country told TASS.

“The contract was signed with the Federal University of Para. Tentative completion date for installing the station and putting it into operation is this year’s fourth quarter,” Gennady Saenko said.

It will be the fifth Glonass station on the territory of the Southern American state.

“Two stations of this type have already been installed in Recife [the capital of Brazil’s northeastern state of Pernambuco] and Santa Maria [in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul].

Two stations of different types are operating in the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro,” he said.

According to the Russian official, the station is designed to increase precision and improve performance of the Glonass system. “Apart from fulfilling their main task, they can also be used by Brazilian scientists for their own research,” Saenko added.

Header: Assembling a Glonass-M spacecraft © Evgeniy Kurskov/TASS

Source: TASS

The Gates to Gehenna

*Gehenna: (in both Judaism and Christianity) hell. Bill Gates openly admits that he is a globalist and eugenicist working toward the New World Order with his plan to mass vaccinate and depopulate the planet by 10% to 15%, which may suggest to the alert-minded that his vaccinations will not improve life, but eliminate life. Bill Gates’s Quantum Dot Vaccine will have an enzyme called Luciferace. When injected into the human, it will “mark” the person like cattle, and be trackable. The patent application filed by Microsoft Technology Licensing, LCC, and registered on 26 March 2020, is WO/2020/060606, known as “666” and titled, “Cryptocurrency system using body activity data.”

***

There have always been voices whose aim it was to abolish national sovereignty for globalism – a Master Plan for world conquest. In addition to the discernible despots, there are the self-defined intellectual elites – the enlightened ones – whose world government would guarantee protection for the submissive or unaware in exchange for their freedom and human dignity.

Bill and Melinda Gates, aided and abetted by the Obama administration, leads the way in destroying public education, turning out undereducated Marxists with his Common Core curriculum. It also oversexualizes the children toward transgendering, demeaning the boys for toxic masculinity, their virility and desire to father the next generation with the anticipated result of depopulation, Gates’s ultimate purpose. His foundation for depopulation, heavily financed by Warren Buffet’s $30 billion donation, contributes to engineering millions, perhaps billions, of human casualties and tragedies.

If the global warming panic and the gender madness failed to subdue us effectively, the coronavirus, COVID-19, fortuitously, if not purposely created to deliver the scare tactics, continues the assault. Inexperienced epidemiologists were suddenly in authority, spouting severe cautionary statements, only to change them the following week. This is an American, even a World, First to force-quarantine the healthy, using carefully manipulating behaviors. All but “necessary” businesses were shut down indefinitely, some open under strict conditions. The elite in the limelight remained well coiffed and free to conduct their own affairs.

To the false goals of flattening the curve and bogus fatality rates, power seekers added new prohibitions. Having achieved submission, despotic governors issued additional senseless proclamations, varying in type, intensity and duration, that turned sheltered care facilities into virus breeding grounds, workforces into depressed unemployed, some homebound into spousal abusers, and the desperate into suicides. School closings may have caused irreparable damage to the children who, left on their own, would fall further behind the studious and gifted. Many businesses closed their doors forever, and major industries – travel, real estate, construction, and more – were seriously affected.

Dr. Antony Fauci, “respected” epidemiologist, immunologist, and member of Gates’s Leadership Council, issued many directives based on available data, only to modify them later, with the media adding to the hysteria.

Dr. Stephen M. Smith, a widely respected infectious disease specialist, called hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) a “game changer,” a safe, effective treatment for COVID-19. The FDA had ruled it safe for the last half-century.

In April, a poll of 62,000 physicians in 30 countries found HCQ to be the best drug available to treat this virus – used in conjunction with azithromycin, zinc and Vitamin D. But Fauci endorsed remdesivir, which was shown to be a failed antiviral drug that had significantly higher mortality rates (5%), but also a significantly higher profit margin.

Dr. Peter R. Breggin, MD, has now published his findings, “Fauci’s Remdesivir: Inadequate to Treat COVID-19 and Potentially Lethal.”

Adverse reactions may include lung damage – respiratory failure or acute respiratory distress syndrome, with five percent developing a life-threatening decline in condition. Fauci clandestinely ended a double-bind clinical trial “to let the placebo group know so they can have access to remdesivir.”

However, since the drug was not saving lives, had serious effects from earlier trials, and its results were disappointing and controversial, “Fauci may have needlessly endangered the lives of the placebo patients by unleashing remdesivir upon them.” Fauci’s research is considered worthless, “except to raise serious doubts about the drug’s hidden safety profile.” Lancet reported the drug’s potential increased damage to the lungs.

Through the duration of the trial, Fauci must have realized that his drug was not going to reduce the mortality rate or even lead to complete recovery. When success criteria were dropped, the primary marker became “time to recovery.”

Fauci then “reinvented the concept of recovery” to include patients who remain hospitalized or at home, requiring oxygen and needing to limit their activities – to get his desired results.

It was also revealed that of Fauci’s 50 committee members who set treatment guidelines, nine had financial ties to Giliad, manufacturer of remdesivir, the vaccination peddled by Fauci. The less profitable HCQ was removed as an option with no verifiable statistics; remdesivir is being used today.

The corrupt Veterans Administration study claimed to show HCQ useless and dangerous, and President Trump’s treatment of hydroxychloroquine was ridiculed, but frontline physicians around the world contend their studies have shown it to be an “astonishingly effective … miracle drug!”

Some people were made so fearful by inaccurate “statistics,” the lockdowns and job losses to ruin the economy, that it triggered neuroses, obsessive behavior, anger and cruelty.

Face masks are still mandated although Dr. Fauci admitted their purpose was primarily for psychological reassurance. For some they cause anxiety, PTSD, claustrophobia, and exacerbate asthma, headaches, and respiratory issues.

The masks and media perpetuate the fear, keep the public eager for vaccinations, and prevent specific rallies and in-person voting. The public is in limbo, their lives on hold, eagerly awaiting a “blessed” vaccination.

The millions of out-of-school students and lockdown-unemployed are free to become Bill Gates’s willing army of contract tracers for an illusion of safety, and to ensure that his vaccinations are implemented according to his plan.

To what end? To collect data and encourage people to tattle on others, to keep the public vulnerable and acquiescent while demanding his vaccine of choice for the trillion-dollar industry – as well as to destroy our America for the coveted One World.

The globalist crème include Bill and Melinda Gates, the Soros foundations, Hillary Clinton, Rockefeller Foundation, Carnegie Corp., Ford Foundation, Warren Buffet, and 150 mainstream media outlets.

The International Air Transport Association (IATA), representing 299 airlines, is the prime promoter of a global ID tracking system – contract tracing for an “Immunity Passport” for the right to travel.

Sold as necessary for “the common good,” the passport is already operating in some states by the 13.5 IOS update on the iphone.

Gates’s control reaches wealth, policies, priorities, population, health, narratives, minds, land, industries, the rights to movement and our future. He is involved with everything, and he is willing to risk other people’s lives.

As reported by noted investigative journalists Corey’s Digs, the WHO, UN and Gates control the media; the healthcare and vaccine industries; climate change hoax, with 200 billionaires who would also like to rule the world; geoengineering population control; tourism in islands known for drugs and human trafficking; investments in lab-grown meat; labor and sex trafficking in Africa; population control through abortion and transgenderism; eugenics, carrying out experimentation on humans, and population databases; and contact tracing, a multiple-state surveillance program on Americans.

Bill Gates intends to control global population based on their immunity, as verified by the “digital certificate”

The $3 trillion coronavirus package submitted to Congress includes $75 billion for Nancy Pelosi’s COVID19 testing, tracing and isolation program, which is being marketed to governors across the country and already underway in Massachusetts.

Contact tracing, whose structure already exists for Partners in Health (PIH), with Chelsea Clinton on the board of trustees, has been well funded by Bill Gates.

The program is designed to investigate one’s personal life, includes quarantine camps, mandatory masks in public despite Dr. Fauci’s admission (above), and provides mobile units (contact tracing armies) that will seize and isolate anyone who tests positive. The supporting programs already exist in Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio, and North Carolina; are under discussion in California, Minnesota, and Maryland; and planned for the rest of the world. They judge President Trump a “national security risk” because Trump was going to “unravel vital ties across the Asia-Pacific region,” which I take to mean an impediment to Gates’s vaccination plans.

The contact tracing has begun. Washington state is forcing restaurants to keep daily logs of their customers – name, address, phone number, time of arrival. Indiana is outsourcing their tracing to Maximus, a 500-people staff at a cost of $43 million a year. California’s Governor Newsome has mandated masking and building a tracing army, a volunteer corps of 10,000; Michigan’s Governor Whitmer has already recruited 2,000 volunteer tracers. Tennessee has been housing the homeless during the pandemic, a forced quarantine. Wisconsin’s Supreme Court struck down the stay-at-home order and seizure of power, which would have had citizens detained and confined without benefit of trial.

Gates hopes to implement digital certificates, to obtain everyone’s virus and vaccination histories.

He wants a “national tracking system,” a human “barcode,” to determine the person’s health, vaccination identity and status. He assures us that this is merely for safety and convenience – that is, until it’s not, when he may desire the information’s value for other reasons, against our human and civil rights.

Bill Gates extends his unlimited wealth and reach far beyond travel, for credit, purchases, job opportunities, healthcare access. Lacking credentials, he transformed his self-image from software magnate into a visionary capable of defining the health of billions of people around the globe. As noted in The Corbett Report, the Gates Foundation has spent tens of millions of dollars per year on media partnerships to boost his new image and his connections with global alliances and big pharmaceutical companies, earning him profits in the billions. He helped to create Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance; the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria; control ten tropical diseases; the Global Financing Facility for Women, Children and Adolescents; the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations; the World Health Organization; the National Institute of Health; the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, and more, including their pledge to “fight” coronavirus, with Dr. Fauci as representative. His “philanthropy” of investing his Microsoft stock into his foundation, during the Decade of Vaccines, doubled to $103.1 billion; philanthropy becomes revenue.

The accolades Gates received for vaccines the world over led to enormous profits for Big Pharma companies, greater control for the Gates Foundation over global health, and greater power for Bill Gates over the planet’s population. He persuades that we cannot return to normal until there’s a vaccine for all, yet he acknowledges the risks (the paralysis of 40 to 500 children, the paralysis of 490,000+ in India from the oral polio vaccines given between 2000 and 2017) and therefore, wants advance legal immunity for the pharma companies. He continues to threaten our freedoms with impending doom in order to market his untested, experimental vaccinations to everyone on the planet.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced 20% of human test subjects were severely injured from Gates-Fauci coronavirus vaccines by Moderna.

Fauci was so confident that he waived ferret and primate studies, and 15 human guinea pigs suffered a serious adverse event within 43 days of receiving Moderna’s injections.

A vaccine with those reaction rates could cause grave injuries in 1.5 billion humans if administered to “every person on earth.”

Corey’s Digs assures that money is not the end goal of Gates’s “philanthropic” activities. It is also not control of only the health industry, but of the human population itself.

Header: Dulle Griet by Pieter Brueghel (I) – “The Elder” – Museum Mayer van den Bergh

Original: Tabitha Korol – Arutz Sheva

Nearly 40% of Americans believe Joe Biden has dementia

A growing number of Americans believe former Vice President Joe Biden (77 years old), the presumptive Democratic 2020 presidential nominee, is suffering from dementia, according to a new poll.

The survey, conducted by Rasmussen and published Monday evening, showed that 38% of American likely voters believe Biden has dementia, compared to 48% who say he likely does not have dementia. Fourteen percent are unsure.

Among those with an opinion, 44% believe the former Vice President has dementia, compared to 56% who believe he does not.

Broken down by party affiliation, 20% of self-described Democrats believe Biden is suffering from dementia, along with 66% of Republicans and 30% of independents.

A majority of likely voters say Biden’s frequent gaffes and confusing public statements make the issue a valid one for discussion, with 61% saying Biden should publicly address questions regarding his mental state.

Fully 41% of likely voters say it is “very important” for Biden to publicly address the issue.

The poll surveyed 1,000 likely voters between June 25th and 28th, and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3%, with a 95% level of confidence.

Source: Arutz Sheva

The media is lying about the ‘Second Wave’

For months, the Washington Post and the rest of the mainstream media kept a morbid Covid-19 “death count” on their front pages and at the top of their news broadcasts. The coronavirus outbreak was all about the number of dead.

The narrative was intended to boost governors like Cuomo in New York and Whitmer in Michigan, who turned their states authoritarian under the false notion that destroying people’s jobs, freedom, and lives would somehow keep a virus from doing what viruses always do: spread through a population until eventually losing strength and dying out.

The “death count” was always the headline.

But then all of a sudden early in June the mainstream media did a George Orwell and lectured us that it is all about “cases” and has always been all about “cases.”

Death, and especially infection fatality rate, were irrelevant. Why? Because from the peak in April, deaths had decreased by 90 percent and were continuing to crash. That was not terrifying enough so the media pretended this good news did not exist.

With massive increases in testing, the “case” numbers climbed. This is not rocket science: the more people you test the more “cases” you discover.

Unfortunately our mainstream media is only interested in pushing the “party line.” So the good news that millions more have been exposed while the fatality rate continues to decline – meaning the virus is getting weaker – is buried under hysterical false reporting of “new cases.”

Unfortunately many governors, including our own here in Texas, are incapable of resisting the endless lies of the mainstream media.

They are putting Americans again through the nightmare of forced business closures, mandated face masks, and restrictions of Constitutional liberties based on false propaganda.

In Texas the “second wave” propaganda has gotten so bad that the leaders of the four major hospitals in Houston took the extraordinary step late last week of holding a joint press conference to clarify that the scare stories of Houston hospitals being overwhelmed with Covid cases are simply untrue. Dr. Marc Boom of Houston Methodist said the reporting on hospital capacity is misleading. He said, “quite frankly, we’re concerned that there is a level of alarm in the community that is unwarranted right now.”

In fact, there has been much reporting that the “spike” in Texas cases is not due to a resurgence of the virus but to hospital practices of Covid-testing every patient coming in for any procedure at all. If it’s a positive, well that counts as a “Covid hospitalization.”

Why would hospitals be so dishonest in their diagnoses?

Billions of appropriated Federal dollars are being funneled to facilities based on the number of “Covid cases” they can produce. As I’ve always said, if you subsidize something you get more of it.

And that’s why we are getting more Covid cases.

Let’s go back to the original measurements used to scare Americans into giving up their Constitutional liberties: the daily death numbers. Even though we know hospitals have falsely attributed countless deaths to “Covid-19” that were deaths WITH instead of FROM the virus, we are seeing actual deaths steadily declining over the past month and a half. Declining deaths are not a great way to push the “second wave” propaganda, so the media and politicians have moved the goal posts and decided that only “cases” are important. It’s another big lie.

Resist propaganda and defend your liberty. That is the only way we’ll get through this.

Header: FILE – In this May 20, 2020, file photo, Salt Lake County Health Department public health nurse Lee Cherie Booth performs a coronavirus test outside the Salt Lake County Health Department in Salt Lake City. AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, File

Original: Ron Paul

‘I persuaded Prime Minister Netanyahu to purchase submarines’

Former National Security Adviser Yaakov Amidror spoke to Radio 103FM on Monday and commented on the call of the Yesh Atid-Telem party to launch a probe into the submarine affair.

Amidror explained why Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu allowed Egypt to buy submarines from Germany.

“If we did not permit the Germans to sell submarines to Egypt, they would have bought the same submarines from the French, Koreans or another country. We could not prevent the Egyptians from buying submarines. We preferred it to be in Germany, and the decision turned out to be correct.”

Responding to the claim that Israel holds more submarines than it needs, he replied, “I came up with the submarine purchase and pushed the Prime Minister to do it. I have no doubt that Israel needs 9 submarines, and that is why Israel acted correctly. I am willing to testify before every commission of inquiry. There is no problem with this decision. If anyone cut a coupon along the way – let him go to jail.”

Earlier on Monday, MK Ofer Shelah, head of the State Supervisory Committee, said in advance of Tuesday’s committee discussion that he plans to request that the State Comptroller launch an in-depth inquiry into what the submarine affair.

“There isn’t just a suspicion of corruption here – it’s also a question of dubious decision-making processes on sensitive security issues involving billions of shekels from Treasury coffers, which we will be discussing with senior security figures,” he said, adding, “We must not allow a situation to occur in which this affair sinks into the depths of political dispute.”

In November of 2018, the police published its recommendations following the conclusion of the investigation into the submarine affair. The recommendations stated that evidence was established for the prosecution of six senior officers who were interrogated in the affair.

Among the senior officials are Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s close associate and personal attorney David Shimron, Netanyahu’s former bureau chief David Sharan and former Navy commander Maj. Gen. (res.) Eliezer Marom.

Police have stressed that the Prime Minister is not suspected of any connection to the affair.

Header: Dolphin-2 Class Israeli submarine tower

Source: Arutz Sheva